Launched in November 2023, the Niagara Workforce Coalition is making connections, weaving information into planning, and working together to reach our workforce potential. We act as a practical hub for addressing local labour market challenges and resourcing needs.
Who we are
- Employers and employer-serving organizations: Providing insights into industry needs and hiring trends.
- Education organizations: Developing talent and supporting people to become job-ready.
- Economic development teams: Enabling business retention and expansion & foreign investment.
- Employment services and social services: Offering essential support including career counseling and wraparound services.
Current initiatives
- Integrated workforce planning and development: Creating a cohesive approach to workforce planning.
- Talent attraction and retention: Developing new models to assist employers in attracting and retaining talent.
- Informed action: Sharing information and inspiring workforce-related solutions.
How we work
- We meet monthly as a whole group (and linger after each meeting to let community happen).
- Each partner appoints one representative to attend meetings, facilitating strategic collaboration between their organization and the Coalition.
- We work in smaller groups on projects and activities, engaging team and community members outside the Coalition as needed.
Get Involved
Join us to:
Connect
Know who’s who and how they’re serving employers and job seekers.
Share
Coordinate data and information to increase capacity and reduce duplication.
Take Action
Determine workforce needs and co-initiate solutions.
Partners
Coalition Convener
What we’re working on
Talent attraction and retention
All too often, we hear from local small to medium-sized businesses that lack HR support. So, we’re testing a new support model to assist Girotti Machine Ltd. with their talent recruitment and workforce planning activities. The goal is to learn as much as we can during this 6-month pilot and refine our process before offering this support to other SMEs.
Niagara is primed for new investments by larger employers too, like Ashai Kasei. While they tend to have well-resourced HR systems, they’re new to our community (and complex workforce ecosystem). We’re assisting them to navigate and find talent through local employment agencies, education institutions, training organizations, and various other networks.
Informed action
Each partner in the Coalition has valuable information that can shape ideas and solutions to workforce challenges. We learn about emerging opportunities and the realities of the labour market each time we gather and share.
This openness has led to 3 new partnerships and projects (that we know of) among Coalition partners, focused in innovating training/skills development and talent attraction. We’re advocating for better systems for sharing information to support our respective work.
Integrated workforce planning and development
We’re designing a workforce planning and development action plan that focuses on talent attraction and retention, leveraging our existing population, and addressing gaps (e.g. the mismatch between the skills workers have and those that employers require).
Our action plan will be informed by forecasting workforce supply and demand in the core and emerging sectors identified in Niagara Region’s 10-year Economic Development Strategy.